Mission Impossible III
So last night I headed out with a friend of mine to see this flick at 11:10PM down the street. Because my allergies have been bad I haven't really been into drinking beer. For some reason beer will start tasting rusty or something. I'm not really into hard liquor at all so we decided to smuggle in a bottle of wine (corkscrew, plastic cups and all!) and we split it. (Before you start worrying that I'm becoming a wino who sits in movie theaters drinking wine, think about it this way. 1. I wasn't drinking it from the bottle. And 2. If I told you I split a bottle of wine with a friend while we watched a movie on dvd that would be no issue. That's normal. So the real issue here isn't me becoming a big time boozer or whatever. The real issue is that I'm some sort of derelict that smuggles wine into a movie- which I can live with.) I also brought along wasabi peas and twizz. Both which went well with the wine.
Anyway, the theater was loaded with talkers, yellers and parents with little kids (11:10PM. nice momming, mommy.). After we all stared at some annoying commercials (one sort of stupid sort of hot one with Kate Moss for Nikon. It was an extended version of this.) Mission Impossible starts up. Now let me say I really wasn't that psyched at all to see this movie. I barely remember the other two. The only thing I remember was they both half-sucked. Just dumb confusing plot and Tom Cruise running and flying and driving and spinning and all that crap which was fine. But that was the old Tom Cruise. The Tom Cruise who wasn't friggin blatantly crazy in public. And as soon as this movie opens up I had doubts about taking him seriously ever again. His loonicity was a factor in War of the Worlds and it was a factor in the marketing push for this movie (which btw felt like it totally missed the mark. sort of like I just wished Tom Cruise would have stayed home. his crazy basically negates his promotional abilities now. it's like 'real-life' Tom Cruise is now officially a buzz-kill.)
Ok I'm babbling. Yadda yadda the movie starts up. First scene is fun and tense. Seymour Phillips Hoffburg is instantly really good as the villian. I got sort of psyched as dudes in the audience sang along 'Dum dum... dum dum! Dum dum...' with the opening theme song. But in reality, I expected to sit through and tolerate this movie for what it was. Not liking. Not disliking. Whatevering. But then something interesting happened. The crazy Cruise factor started to fade off and I liked Cruise like normal (almost). The plot was something I was able to follow! And scene to scene! Action to action! Talk to talk! It was all fun! Coolio action, jackson! And something dawned on me. I was seriously liking this friggin movie!! The first half of this movie is better than anything in the other two by far. Ying Yang Rhames was fun. Dickface Billy Krudup showed up and he was good. Lawrence Fishman was overacting right in my face and I didn't mind. It was all clicking! And the action made me laugh out loud a few times! I was like, 'Holy shit! J.J. Walker really knows his stuff!'
But then! But then... (insert downer trombone sound here) at the 65-70% mark it snapped. I started to get lost in the plot. The action got carried away with itself and lunky yawny. I started wandering around in my own head doing stuff like looking for scientoligological meaning in the dialogue. Plot shifts seemed to be happening for no reason. Explanations for crap started coming and everything got sloppy faster and faster until WHAM Stupid Plot smashed into this movie with a force similar to a nitro-boosted speedboat smashing into a nuclear time-machine rocketship (which sits on top of the White House where inside the President's android's evil twin has the detanators!!!). But whatever. They held Stupid Plot at bay for much longer than I thought they ever could and for that achievement I give a half whole-hearted/half-sarcastic golf-clap.
Three Good Things About this Movie
- The whole scene where Cruise breaks into the Vatican rocked (even though I
didn't understand why he just didn't wait on line and buy a ticket).
- Seymour Hoffburg really did a good job with the villian stuff. He was fun to
watch all pudgy and mean and stuff.
- It really looked like it was doing backflips to entertain me and I snapped my
fingers at
it like 'Dance you monkey movie! Entertain your master!'
Three Bad Things About this Movie
- The ending was so clunky clanky that it was like the sound of taking an outboard motor
running full blast bouncing down metal stairs.
- There wasn't enough death and tragedy. Oh lets be careful. F. U.
scaredy cat! Let's knock someone off!
- There could have been cooler gadgets.
All in all, this movie does work out fine and I doubt anyone walks out of it saying, "Man that sucked!!!" Because it doesn't suck. But I'm starting to think like franchise hero action movies are just unavoidably half-stale. I mean how far can it really go? You know the main guy is gonna live. You know everything is gonna be fine. You know the whole point is to fund the next movie. Whatever. At this point I'd rather watch a whole movie focused around the super villain and his sleazy world with the good guy star as the smaller side-part. At least a 50/50 split. Why is that so out of the question? It's just a dopey movie...